Synopses & Reviews
A leading neuroscientist and New York Times-bestselling author of Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot distills the research on the brain and serves up practical, surprising, and illuminating recommendations for warding off neurological decline, cognitive function, and encouraging smarter thinking day to day. In Think Smart, the renowned neuropsychiatrist and bestselling author Dr. Richard Restak details how each of us can improve and tone our body's most powerful organ: the brain.
As a renowned expert on the brain, Restak knows that in the last five years there have been exciting new scientific discoveries about the brain and its performance. So he's asked his colleagues-many of them the world's leading brain scientists and researchers-one important question: What can I do to help my brain work more efficiently? Their surprising-and remarkably feasible-answers are at the heart of Think Smart.
Restak combines advice culled from cutting-edge research with brain-tuning exercises to show how individuals of any age can make their brain work more effectively. In the same accessible prose that made Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot a New York Times bestseller, Restak presents a wide array of practical recommendations about a variety of topics, including the crucial role sleep plays in boosting creativity, the importance of honing sensory memory, and the neuron- firing benefits of certain foods.
In Think Smart, the "wise, witty, and ethical Restak" (says the Smithsonian Institution) offers readers helpful suggestions for fighting neurological decline that will put every reader on the path to building a healthier, more limber brain.
Review
Waters (
The Night Watch) reflects on the collapse of the British class system after WWII in a stunning haunted house tale whose ghosts are as horrifying as any in Shirley Jackson's
The Haunting of Hill House. Doctor Faraday, a lonely bachelor, first visited Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked as a parlor maid, at age 10 in 1919. When Faraday returns 30 years later to treat a servant, he becomes obsessed with Hundreds's elegant owner, Mrs. Ayres; her 24-year-old son, Roderick, an RAF airman wounded during the war who now oversees the family farm; and her slightly older daughter, Caroline, considered a natural spinster by the locals, for whom the doctor develops a particular fondness. Supernatural trouble kicks in after Caroline's mild-mannered black Lab, Gyp, attacks a visiting child. A damaging fire, a suicide and worse follow. Faraday, one of literature's more unreliable narrators, carries the reader swiftly along to the devastating conclusion.
Publishers Weekly Starred review
Synopsis
A chilling and vividly rendered ghost story set in postwar Britain, by the bestselling and award-winning author of The Night Watch and Fingersmith.
Sarah Watersas trilogy of Victorian novels Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith earned her legions of fans around the world, a number of awards, and a reputation as one of todayas most gifted historical novelists. With her most recent book, The Night Watch, Waters turned to the 1940s and delivered a tender and intricate novel of relationships that brought her the greatest success she has achieved so far. With The Little Stranger, Waters revisits the fertile setting of Britain in the 1940saand gives us a sinister tale of a haunted house, brimming with the rich atmosphere and psychological complexity that have become hallmarks of Watersas work.
The Little Stranger follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in declineaits masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.
Abundantly atmospheric and elegantly told, The Little Stranger is Sarah Watersas most thrilling and ambitious novel yet.
Synopsis
From a renowned neuroscientist and bestselling author comes a book that shows readers how to improve and tone the brain. In the last five years, there have been exciting new scientific discoveries about the brain, its function, and its performance. In this fascinating, entertaining book, brain expert Dr. Richard Restak has asked his colleagues-the world's leading brain scientists and researchers-an important question: What can I do to help my brain work more efficiently? Their surprising answers are at the heart of Think Smart. In his characteristically accessible style, Restak explains the latest scientific discoveries about our brain and gives readers strategies on how they can keep their most powerful organ in top condition and fight off its decline.
About the Author
Richard Restak, M.D., is an award-winning neuroscientist, neuropsychiatrist, and clinical professor of neurology at the George Washington University Medical Center. The bestselling author of eighteen acclaimed books about the brain, including Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot and Poe's Heart and the Mountain Climber, he has also penned dozens of articles for a variety of publications, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. He is a member of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Neurology, and the American Neuropsychiatric Association.